Professor Bill Gould in quoted in this Los Angeles Times article on a labor dispute focused on contingent workers and the labor rules that apply to them. 

A labor dispute at a Silicon Valley recycling center could dramatically change who corporate America counts as an employee..

The National Labor Relations Board ruled Thursday that companies using workers hired by another business — such as staffing agencies, contractors or even fast-food franchises — are still on the hook for labor violations and could be required to bargain with unions representing those employees.

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“It’s a great boon for contingent workers, which constitute such a growing part of our workforce and who are on the periphery,” said William Gould IV, emeritus professor at Stanford University Law School and a former chairman of the NLRB in the 1990s.

Gould said the previous standard was a much bigger hurdle for employees, who had to prove that the parent company had much more direct control over their operations in order to be considered a “joint employer.”

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“It will impact workers who have never even thought about the collective bargaining process but simply say, ‘I want you to change the conditions here, the wages, the heat in the facility, which I think are wrong,'” Gould said. “The boss can’t say, ‘Hey, I’m going to penalize you for doing that.'”